A Brooklyn judge temporarily blocked the demolition of the oldest synagogue in Borough Park after members argued the sale of the building was based on misrepresentations.

Chevra Anshei Lubawitz, on 12th Ave. and 41st St., was sold for $3.1 million on June 14 to developer Moses Karpen, records show. The developer wants to demolish the building and convert it to a six-story apartment building.

As part of the deal, the synagogue would pay $3 million for the first floor and basement of the new building and use the space as a temple.

Seventeen members of the synagogue say they only found out about the sale a few days after it occurred. They contend two board members behind the sale made no effort to seek other offers and that the building was never offered on the open market before it was sold to Karpen, who is a friend of one of the board members.

Supporters of the sale insist there was nothing untoward about the deal, noting the congregation will have a brand-new space under the arrangement.

“The congregation wanted to make sure that they were dealing with a developer that they had confidence in and was highly respected,” said Scott Mollen, the lawyer representing the synagogue’s leadership behind the sale.

The board spoke to several other developers and had the property appraised by an expert before making the sale, Mollen added.

But critics who are seeking to block the deal in court say the building was undersold by at least $1 million, based on another sale in the neighborhood.

The purchase has been in the works for 18 months, records show.

The board filed a petition with the state’s attorney general asking for the legal signoff to make the deal, records show. That petition argued the synagogue, which opened its doors in 1914, is “old, dilapidated, in need of extensive renovation and is no longer able to house” services.

Members opposing the sale say that’s not the case.

“There’s not a single violation on the property,” said David Shor, who has prayed at the synagogue for a decade. “It’s actually beautiful.”

The synagogue has stained glass windows, chandeliers and pews in good condition, a photo shows.

But Mollen said the roof is in dire need of repair, the bathroom is a mess, stairs are damaged and there’s a mold problem.

“There are major structural issues,” he said. “Given the small size of the congregation it is not practical to raise sufficient money.”

The size of the congregation is also in dispute.

Those supporting the sale say there are only about 18 members.

Opponents contend that number is actually closer to 50. They note that there are two Friday night services during the winter months.

As for complaints that members were never notified, Mollen says the sale was brought up in two board meetings before a vote was taken.

One of the members against the sale admitted he attended three meetings where others talked about possibly putting the building up for sale, court records show.

“The congregation completely denies that there was a lack of notice and proper approval by the membership,” said Mollen.

But many say they only heard about it in June, when the synagogue’s leadership announced the building would be closed for the summer while members were away.

“I’ve been praying at this synagogue for 10 years and am so upset at this ugly turn of events which has taken so many of us by surprise,” Shor said.

The legal victory for opponents of the sale may be short-lived.

Judge Marshal Steinhardt’s temporary restraining issued on Thursday order lasts until Oct. 16. It specifically allows the synagogue leadership to proceed with the permitting process required before the demolition.

“The congregation leadership thinks that today was very positive,” Mollen said, noting the next court date is set for Sept. 7.

Still, critics of the deal have faith.

“We are very pleased that the court saw the need to issue a TRO, which will prevent this historic structure from facing the wrecking ball,” Shor said. “We are confident that the court will see the merits of our case, and prevent the destruction of Borough Park’s oldest synagogue.”

First Congregation Sons of Israel will host a service and musical sing-along dinner followed by Kiddush Levana (Sanctification of the Moon) at 6:30 p.m. today.

According to the Jewish faith, the tradition of Kiddush Levana has taken place for well over a millennia, says Rabbi Joel Fox, who will lead the service.

It is found in the Babylonian Talmud where Rabbi Yochanan taught that one who blesses the new moon is regarded like one who greets the Shechinah, or Divine Presence, Fox says.

In Exodus 12:2, it is written: This month is to be for you the beginning of months. It is considered to be the first commandment in the Torah, which is to bless the new month, based on the lunar calendar.

We are taught that those who bless the new month are respecting the first commandment in the Torah, as it reflects the idea of greeting the Divine Presence, Fox says.

Kiddush levana is performed on the first sighting of the new moon, which this month immediately followed the solar eclipse of 2017.

Were not praising the moon, but rather God who created it.

This Friday evening, when the moon is fully visible and unobstructed by cloud cover, members of First Congregation Sons of Israel will stand under the open sky and gaze together at the new moon. They will then recite the blessing accompanied by songs and prayers.

This past Monday evening, Jews began Rosh Chodesh Elul, or the new month of Elul, which is a month of reflection and repentance. It is also the 30-day countdown to Rosh Hashana (the New Year) and 40 days to Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement).

We have looked to the heavens and have marveled at the miraculousness of nature, space and time, Fox says. We have begun the time to reflect on our own miraculous selves and our place in the universe. Blessing the moon on its reappearance is a way of renewing our trust in Gods constant presence. We also will be restoring our awareness of all of the goodness and blessings found in our lives.

In addition to leading the Kiddush Levana celebration, Fox will also lead Shabbat service at 10 a.m. Saturday.

First Congregation Sons of Israel is at 161 Cordova St. Reservations are requested for Shabbat dinner on Friday.

Ahead of next months European Days of Jewish Culture project, the Portuguese town of Belmonte has renovated and reopened its Jewish museum, which is the largest in the world about crypto-Jews.

The reopening earlier this month followed extensive renovations costing $350,000 at the museum, which was founded in 2005, a municipal spokesperson told JTA. The renovations and the addition of interactive exhibitions were timed to be ready for this years edition of the Jewish culture project a framework for events highlighting European Jewish culture that take place each year in the beginning of September in 35 countries.

You could say this this a totally new museum and we are confident that it will become a reference point for Sephardic culture, Belmontes mayor, Antnio Dias Rocha, told the Lusa news agency earlier this month. The aim is for visitors to understand how it was possible for our Jews to remain so many years in Belmonte, he added.

In Barcelona, the European Days of Jewish Culture features a Jewish film festival. In the Netherlands, visitors will be able to access the Middelburg Synagogue, an 18th-century establishment which was built by exiled Portuguese Jews and is the oldest of its kind outside Amsterdam. It is generally not open to the public.

This years theme of Diasporas is particularly relevant to Belmonte, which in the 15th century saw an influx of Jewish refugees from Spain, from where they fled because of the Church-led campaign of persecution known as the Inquisition. When the Inquisition spread to Portugal in 1536, many of Belmontes hundreds of Jewish families fled, becoming refugees themselves. But many stayed and continued to practice Judaism in secrecy, becoming crypto-Jews, or anusim. The community existed as such as late as the early 20th century before disappearing.

In recent years, however, rabbis and activists from the Shavei Israel group, which seeks to reconnect the descendants of the anusim to Judaism, have re-established a small community in Belmonte.

The eastern town of Belmonte is one of only three locales in Portugal with a functioning synagogue, along with Lisbon and Porto. In recent years, local and national tourism bodies have invested millions of dollars in attracting tourists to Belmonte, including by setting up a kosher market each year in September since 2010.

The renovated museum, which includes reconstruction of murals and insight into the individual stories of Belmontes Jews, is projected to attract 100,000 visitors annually, Dias Rocha said. According to Lusa, this figure is slightly higher than the total combined number of visitors who each year come to the towns six other museums. In 2016, 92,000 tourists visited the citys seven museums an increase of 15 percent over 2015.

Separately, in Lisbon Jewish community leaders and municipal workers are preparing for the opening of that citys Jewish museum, due to take place this year. In March, two Jewish museums opened in Braganca and Porto.

As every working parent will tell you, modern families lead busy lives. Mums and dads findthemselves juggling work presentations with spelling tests, interview preparation with school plays and client calls with science projects.

The death this month of Blanche Lindo Blackwell [pictured below] at the age of 104was widely reported in national newspapers. Of course, when someone of that age passes away, she suffers from a grave disadvantage, so to speak. All of her contemporaries have passed away and the friends and younger membersof the family that remain only remember heras an old lady, a relic from another age.

I met Blanche when she was aged just under 100. In fact, she was demanding to see me. Rumours of the Jewish ancestry of the Duchess of Cambridge, confirmed, it was thought, by the birth of little

Prince George in the Lindo Wing of St Marys Hospital, had led to my writing toThe Times,explaining its Jewish history, and that Kate had no known relationship to the Lindo family or, indeed, any Jewish antecedents.

In 1938, Frank Charles Lindo had been so anxious to repay the care he had received from members of the nursing profession that he built a nurses home and private wing atSt Marys Hospital, known as the Lindo Wing. Blanche hailed from the Jamaican branch of the family, and she wanted to know more.

Blanche Blackwell

This was how I found myself ringing the bell nervously to her apartment in Belgravias Lowndes Square. There, I found a sprightly elderly lady, with an engaging personality and warm smile.

She had a friend staying and we were served attentively by two devoted West Indian maids.

Explaining that she was a religious Christian but very proud of being a Jew, Blanche saw no contradiction in this.

Her family had been baptised after the deathof a young son from blackwater fever, the scourge of the tropics.

Blanchie, as she called herself, wanted me to research her English family, and invitations were extended with my husband for dinner and a tea. She was very fond of her computer, which had been adapted for her failing eyesight, and regaled us with amusing stories.

Born in Costa Rica in 1912, the second daughter and third child of two Lindo cousins, she had a wonderful time growing up in Jamaica.

Sent to boarding school, she was known as a rebel, and finished in Paris, the only West Indian debutante of the year 1933.

Her marriage to a member of the Crosse & Blackwell family ended in divorce, but her son was the owner of Island Records and the discoverer of Bob Marley, the reggae star.

She had acted as hostess to the rich and famous on the island and, indeed, to royalty. Blanche was very good company but, the last time I was invited to tea in Lowndes Square, she had forgotten she had invited me.

However, by then she had all the information on the English branch of her Sephardi family. Isaac Lindo, born about 1638, had settled in London, becoming an Elder at Bevis Marks Synagogue.

It was David Abarbanel Lindo who performed Disraelis circumcision and itwas Abigail Lindo, lexicographer, who was the only woman of her time to have publications in her own name.

It was Benjamin Lindo who supplied perfume to the royal family and Gabriel Lindo who wassolicitor to the Sephardic congregation.

It was Blanche Lindo, however,who became the first and only honorary member of The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain, at the age of 100.

Even if you dont follow pop music, you may have heard pianist and songwriter Regina Spektor singing the catchy Orange Is the New Black theme song, Youve Got Time, covering The Beatles While My Guitar Gently Weeps in the animated feature Kubo and the Two Strings, or in numerous other films and TV shows that have featured her music.

But you might never have heard the Russian Jewish immigrant at all had the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society not helped her family settle in New York. At age 9, Spektor entered the United States as a refugee when her parents fled Soviet persecution in 1989. The family settled in the Kingsbridge neighborhood in the Bronx and was absorbed into the Jewish community there, receiving donations of clothes, furniture and other necessities. Experiencing religious freedom for the first time, Spektor remembers realizing how constrained and stilted the Judaism they had practiced in Russia had been.

Part of a musical family, Spektor was already a serious piano student when she left Russia. The family had to leave their piano behind, and Spektor was reduced to practicing on tabletops until she found a piano to play in her synagogues basement. Through an acquaintance of her fathers, Spektor met a piano teacher with whom she studied, free of charge, until age 17. By that time, she was writing her own songs.

Raised on classical music and contraband Beatles and Rolling Stones records, in America Spektor was exposed to punk, hip-hop, and, most important, female songwriters like Joni Mitchell. After graduating from the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, she began recording her own CDs and performing in local venues in New York. She attracted the attention of the popular band The Strokes, who brought her on tour and gave her national exposure. She was signed by Sire records in 2004 and has since released five major-label albums to public and critical acclaim. In 2010, she performed at the White House for President Barack Obama for Jewish Heritage Month, and in 2012, she performed a benefit concert for HIAS.

Spektor who will kick off a special solo U.S. tour in Tucson with a concert at the Rialto Theater on Oct. 20 remains fluent in Russian and reads Hebrew. Her history informs much of her music. Although her relationship with religion is complicated, she describes herself as someone to whom faith comes naturally and who is drawn to traditions. The title of her latest album, Remember Us to Life, is English for the High Holy Days refrain Zochreinu LChaim. Spektors outlook was shaped by her early environment, a culture in which violence and oppression were commonplace and the history of World War II and the Stalin years was an ever-looming shadow.

Touring in Berlin earlier this month, Spektor spoke out on social media about the Aug 12 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that ended with a counterprotestor being killed in a car ramming attack.

I am in Berlin where after a dark history, it is illegal to be a Nazi or say hate speech, she said in a Facebook post. As a refugee, I have promised to protect and fight for my country when I was sworn in as a citizen. I was a teenager then. As I held up my right hand, I never dreamed of the hate speeches and the normalizing of institutionalized prejudice that would be falling over the land in such a short time. The haters coming out of the shadows, and being empowered.

Spektors lyrics reflect a deep sense of how vulnerable humans can be in a complex, often hostile world. What makes Spektors songs unique is the balance between her feel for the fragility of people and her robust sense of just how fun music and life itself can be.

WASHINGTON (JTA)-The Palestinian Authority expects the Trump administration to commit to a peace deal endgame before the close of this month and prefers it would be the two-state solution.

“We need them to tell us where the hell they are going,” Husam Zomlot, the Palestine Liberation Organization envoy to Washington, said Thursday at a meeting in his office with reporters. “It’s about time we hear it.”

Zomlot said a high-level U.S. delegation comprising Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and his top adviser charged with Middle East peace; Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s top international negotiator; and Dina Powell, a deputy national security adviser, would meet Aug. 24 in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian negotiating team.

The meeting will come toward the end of a tour in which the U.S. officials also will meet with Israeli and other regional leaders, including from Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Zomlot said that for the Palestinian Authority, the preferred outcome remained a recommitment to the two-state solution. Trump retreated soon after assuming the presidency in January from a two-state outcome, which has been U.S. policy since 2002. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had committed to a two-state solution in 2009, also has been silent since then about his commitment. A majority of Netanyahu’s Cabinet opposes having two states.

“A two-state solution has international equilibrium, it has regional backing and it has a global consensus,” Zomlot said. “We are saying to them, we have a starting point, and letting go of this starting point is the worst thing they can do”

Zomlot said the Palestinian Authority wanted two states based on the 1967 borders, and wanted to hear from the Trump administration how best to deal with factors that would endanger a peaceful outcome, including Jewish settlements, the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and religious tensions at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which both Jews and Muslims claim as holy.

“The how is crucial,” he said.

He said that in the wake of serious negotiations, “the Palestinian consensus government will be tasked with two things: the ending of the situation in Gaza-the unprecedented situation in Gaza-and as soon as possible the convening of Palestinian national elections.”

A major obstruction to advancing peace talks has been the absence of P.A. control in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas terrorist group is the authority. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, along with Israel, have been squeezing Gaza by reducing basic supplies to its Hamas rulers, including electricity.

Zomlot would not say what the Palestinian Authority would do if the U.S. delegation did not lay out an endgame, but said uncertainty could lead the P.A. to return to seeking international recognition for statehood-a posture that Israel and the United States adamantly oppose-or to further Palestinian resistance against Israel. He said the resistance would be “peaceful.”

Zomlot conveyed an overall positive impression of Trump and his negotiators, saying they had carefully considered Palestinian positions, and that Trump’s commitment to an endgame rather than simply perpetuating the process was positive.

“The character of President Trump himself-we believe this is a person who could actually take the leap, who could exert pressure on all sides,” he said.

Zomlot and the Palestinian Authority appear to be relying on pressure by Trump as a means of delivering Israel on the two-state solution. Zomlot made clear that he did not believe Netanyahu had the wherewithal to advance to final status negotiations on his own.

“Netanyahu is behaving like a politician, not a statesman,” he said of the prime minister’s coalition maneuvering, in which he must deal with partners who oppose concessions. “Israel deserves better leadership.”

Zomlot expressed anger with Congress and the welter of proposed bills that would cut U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority and otherwise penalize it. Chief among the measures is the Taylor Force Act, named for an American stabbed to death in a 2016 terrorist attack, which would link funding to the Palestinian areas to the cessation of P.A. payments to the families of Palestinians killed in or jailed for attacks on Israelis.

He said the Palestinian Authority was ready to “revise and negotiate” its payment system, but would not submit to pressure.

Michal Levy and her three children, with Debbie Ashkenazi, right, of IFCJ, at Ben Gurion Airport.

As the political and economic situation in Venezuela becomes increasingly unstable, Jews are fleeing the South American nation, with many choosing to immigrate to Israel.

Conditions in Venezuela began deteriorating in 2013 following the death of the countrys former president, Hugo Chavez, and the ascension of his chosen successor Nicolas Maduro, a former bus driver.

Chavez aspired to dictatorship and was harshly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. During the past four years of his successors rule, inflation has skyrocketed, leading to shortages in food and basic supplies such as medicine and toilet paper. Venezuelans stand in long lines sometimes for 12 hours just to obtain bare essentials.

There is no value to life right now in Venezuela, Adele Tarrab, a Venezuelan Jew who moved to Israel with her family in 2015, told JNS. Ive actually seen people get killed for bread.

Venezuela was once home to a thriving Jewish community, one of the largest in South America, with around 25,000 members in 1999. The crumbling economy caused many of the countrys Jews to flee, most to Miami, Mexico and Panama. Some 9,000 Jews are believed to still reside in Venezuela.

We love Venezuela, Tarrab said. Its a beautiful country. We still have family there, but they want to leave.

In late July, a group of 26 new Venezuelan immigrants arrived in Israel, with the Israeli government and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) facilitating their aliyah.

IFCJ says it is the only organization on the ground in Venezuela assisting the Jewish community with aliyah. During the past 18 months, the organization has brought 153 Venezuelan Jews to Israel, and has helped the immigrants obtain thousands of dollars in support to get on their feet.

In the past four years weve seen a deterioration in the situation of the people of Venezuela, IFCJs founder and president, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, says. Many of the olim (immigrants) that we have brought to Israel have not been able, literally, to put bread on the table.

Most of them are coming to Israel literally with the shirts on their backs, no luggage, he says.

IFCJ aids elderly and less affluent Jews who remain in Venezuela, as the majority of wealthy members of the countrys Jewish community already left for Miami before the situation deteriorated, Eckstein says.

According to Eckstein, amid the lack of law and order in Venezuela, Jews are increasingly targeted for kidnappings by criminal gangs who hold them for ransom.

Since the Jewish community has this image of being more affluent due to stereotypes about Jews, kidnappings of Jewish community members are more common, he says.

Tarrab says that Venezuela is like a jail. You dont leave your house because its very dangerous to go out, she says.

Tarrab recalls a 2009 incident in which 15 armed attackers broke into the main synagogue in Caracas on a Friday night and urinated on the Torah scrolls. It was shocking.

The assailants scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti on the synagogues walls and prevented the community from holding Friday night services.

She also detailed an incident in which government forces confiscated the central gold market in Caracas, where many of her family members, including her father Maurice, owned jewelry stores for more than 30 years.

Chavez knew that many of the stores were owned by the Jewish community. It was shocking and very sad, Tarrab said.

Venezuelas Jewish leaders dont want to present the current economic situation as a crisis, but it really is, Eckstein says.

Despite the lifeline of moving to Israel, Tarrab said the South American immigrants face many new challenges in the Jewish state. They are often frustrated by the lack of help from the Israeli government and encounter intense bureaucracy.

The government should make the process smoother, says Tarrab.

Israels Ministry of Immigration and Absorption this month announced an increase in aid to Venezuelan immigrants.

Total state benefits now amount to $9,700 for couples; $8,200 for single-parent families; $5,100 for singles; $3,000 for children up to age four; $2,200 for children ages four-18; and $2,600 for immigrants ages 18-21.

Soon after arriving in Israel, Tarrab and her family settled in the coastal city of Netanya and opened a restaurant, Rustikana, that serves home-style Venezuelan food. The family imports fresh kosher meat from South American countries such as Argentina to provide authentic flavors.

My family and I came to Israel with con las ganas, the willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed, says Tarrab.

You cannot come to Israel with the same mentality we had in Venezuela. Every day is challenging, she said.

Every day I have to fight, I am always on the defensive. Its tiring, but I love Israel. I feel safe here, and I feel like this is my country.

A judge in Belarus approved the construction of apartments atop two former Jewish cemeteries. Separately, unidentified individuals smashed 24 headstones in a Jewish cemetery in Ukraine.

Eduard Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, in a statement wrote that the incident in Ukraine was discovered Tuesday at the Jewish cemetery of Svaliava in the countrys west. The incident was reported to police, who currently have no suspects.

Earlier this month, a mass grave was discovered during construction near the Ukrainian city ofIvano-Frankivsk. Locals initially ignored the find because they assumed the bones belonged to Jews buried in a nearby cemetery, Radio Svoboda reported, but the works were stopped because the bones were thought to be of non-Jews purged by communist authorities.

In a ruling on a motion seeking an injunction against planned construction on the former Jewish cemetery in the eastern city of Gomel, the judge of the Tsentralny District Court in Belarus on Monday stated the court lacks jurisdiction to take any action, clearing the path for the planned construction, Radio Svaboda reported Monday.

The motion was filed by Yakov Goodman, a Belarus-born American Jewish activist for the preservation of Jewish heritage sites in Belarus. Local authorities last year approved a project for the construction of two luxury apartment buildings on the grounds of a former cemetery on Sozhskaya Street. The motion also pertained to earthworks already underway in the city of Mozyr at another former Jewish cemetery, as per permits issued in 2015, according to the World Association of Belarusian Jews, which Goodman heads.

Both projects mean that bones of Jews buried in those two cemeteries will end up in city dumpsters, Goodman told JTA earlier this week.

Belarusian official have vowed to protect Jewish heritage sites in Belarus, including cemeteries.

Last year, Belarusian Foreign MinisterVladimir Makaiand Lesley Weiss, chair of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of Americas Heritage Abroad, signed a joint declaration at the World Jewish Congress headquarters stating that: Each party will take appropriate steps to protect and preserve properties that represent the cultural heritage of all national, religious, or ethnic groups that reside or resided in its territory.

The singing only encouraged authorities to further attacks on Jewish heritage sites, Goodman said.

Before the signing of the document, Goodmans association accused Belarusian authorities under the countrys authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, of destroying three synagogues one in Luban and two others in the capital Minsk and at least two Jewish cemeteries in addition to Gomel and Mozyr.

Local activists are afraid, understandably to put up a fight in local courts, said Goodman, who was briefly arrested in 2004 in Belarus for his activism. Under Lukashenko, Jewish heritage suffered irreparable losses, said Goodman, who added he may appeal the ruling Monday.

In replying to the motion on construction in Gomel, the citys urban housing and communal services department told the court that: There is no information about the location of the cemetery in this place.

But this assertion was disputed by several historians, including Evgeny Malikov, who wrote earlier this year in a report that the planned construction is strictly prohibited also by Belarusian laws. Both he and Goodman accused authorities of discriminating against Jewish buildings while showing more sensitivity to Christian ones.

Trump economic aide Gary Cohn chides him on CharlottesvilleBBC NewsUS President Donald Trump's top economic adviser has criticised the White House's response to a far-right rally this month in Virginia. National Economic Council director Gary Cohn told the … In his FT interview, Mr Cohn said: “As a Jewish American…

The Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation unveiled a historical marker at Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park in La Crescenta on Aug. 18that includes an explanation of the parks historical ties to Nazis.

The new marker takes note of the parks past, acknowledging that in the years before World War II and as Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany, supporters of Hitler at times paraded in this park.

[Peter Dreier: A tale of two cities Charlottesville and La Crescenta]

The unveiling followed a controversy that arose last year from the installation, and subsequent removal, of a previous sign at the entrance that read, Welcome to Hindenburg Park, recognizing former German President Paul von Hindenburg, a World War I hero who appointed Hitler as chancellor in 1933. The installation of that sign angered Jewish community members who knew of Hindenburgs history.

Mona Field, an Eagle Rock resident and former member of the L.A. Community College District board of trustees, who is Jewish, was among those who advocated for the removal of the Hindenburg Park sign, which was paid for by the Tricentennial Foundation, a nonprofit German-American heritage organization, with the countys approval. The sign was removed last May, about one month after its installation.

Hans Eberhard, 85, the German-born chairman of the Tricentennial Foundation, was 17 when he immigrated to the United States in 1949. At that time, Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park was a private park owned by the German-American League. As Hindenburg Park, it was the setting for dances, picnics and other community events for Germans in the area.

Probably in the late 50s, I started to go to the Hindenburg Park, he said. When I first came [to Los Angeles], I didnt know anybody here. People get to know you and find out youre from Germany, that youre German, [and say] We have an affair, come on down.

By paying for the earlier sign, Eberhard said he was attempting to honor the parks history. But part of that history in the years before World War II, during Hitlers rise to power included rallies staged by the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi group.

Following the removal of Eberhards sign, the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations appointed an ad hoc task force to create a replacement historical marker. Eberhard and Field, who both attended the unveiling, were among the people on the task force.

Field was instrumental in developing the language for the new marker, which features text, photographs and captions. It is titled German-American History at Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park. The photographs include an image showing members of the Bund party, in 1936, posing before a flag with a giant swastika. The photo is courtesy of the special collections and archives of the Oviatt Library at Cal State Northridge, which maintains an archive titled In Our Own Backyard: Resisting Nazi Propaganda in Southern California, 1933-1945.

Eberhard, who is not Jewish, is concerned that the image of the swastika could foment anti-Semitism.

The history [as depicted by the marker] is OK. What I dont like is the picture with the big swastika. I think that attracts undesirable elements. Thats a little offensive, dont you think? he said, suggesting that there might be other ways to convey what happened in the past.

Field said she did her best in working with multiple interests in creating a marker that reflects a part of history that has implications today as the United States debates the ascension of neo-Nazis.

My thing is not to confront people, she said. My thing is to fix a problem.

Jason Moss, executive director of The Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys, also attended the new signs unveiling. He said he was pleased that after more than a year of debate, Fields and Eberhards task force overcame differences and created something tangible.

What I love about the marker is that it captures the true history of what took place at the park, he said. The ad hoc committee was able to come together and work through something that was very difficult, and in the end, I dont think history was whitewashed.